10/14/2009 @ 12:01AM

Shoot First, Talk Later

North Korea wants an audience with America. It just has a funny way of showing it. On Monday, the reclusive state ended its three-month-long charm offensive by test-firing five short-range missiles.

Korea watchers are scratching their heads because the North Koreans had recently sent smoke signals that they would agree to return to the six-party talks on nuclear disarmament, with the U.S., China, Russia, Japan and South Korea. Previously, though, North Korea had characterized those talks as “dead” and insisted instead on bilateral talks with the U.S.; the U.S. had resisted.

In fact, North Korea has already won bilateral talks with China, and some of its biggest concerns were addressed in those talks, which took place last week when China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in Pyongyang. China pledged aid for the impoverished nation and North Korea, for its part, promised to return to the six-party talks.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who met with North Korean diplomats in the summer and is a former ambassador to the United Nations, predicted in an interview that Pyongyang is also likely to land its big prize of one-on-one talks with the U.S.

Look for the U.S. to send Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, special representative for North Korea policy, to Pyongyang. Mostly likely, Bosworth will agree to go to North Korea to discuss the “framework” of the six-party disarmament-for-aid talks–in other words, he’ll go to talk about the future talks.

But look for Pyongyang to crow about it nonetheless.

Talks are moving forward because Kim Jong Il is back in control, calling the shots.”There’s no question he had some kind of a stroke,” Richardson said. But his recovery has emboldened him, and he’s finalized the succession issue–lining up his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, to take control when he dies.

Indeed, during Wen’s visit to Pyongyang last week, China pledged it would support North Korea “for generations to come,” signaling China’s acceptance of Kim’s succession choice–reassurance for Kim that his son will have the support of North Korea’s biggest benefactor, China.

While Kim was sorting out succession issues at home in North Korea, the U.S. was putting pressure on North Korea from outside.

The American version of shooting off test missiles is cutting off money flowing to North Korea. In 2005, the U.S. effectively did so by accusing a bank in Macau of money-laundering for Pyongyang and threatening to blacklist the bank.

Lately, U.S. officials have been hopscotching around Asia, visiting banks they suspect may have been doing business with North Korea, the Associated Press reported earlier this month. “It’s having an effect. We think that the word is out,” Ambassador Philip Goldberg, the American diplomat in charge of coordinating sanctions against North Korea, told the AP.

That’s the big stick. But there’s a small American carrot. Rev. Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham and the leader of Samaritan’s Purse, a Christian relief group, arrived in Pyongyang on Tuesday, just a day after the missile tests.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency quoted Graham saying that he visited to “play the role of a bridge for better relations” between the U.S. and North Korea, according to the AP. Graham’s group has donated more than $10 million in aid to North Korea since 1997, and this week will deliver nearly $200,000 in equipment for a new dental school there.